In today's technological environment, information is readily available from many different types of communication devices now commonly used by virtually everyone in our society. Smart phones, tablets, portable laptops and other such devices are ubiquitous and have become part of our everyday landscape. Surprisingly the manner in which much of the information conveyed over communication networks such as the Internet with the use of these communication devices is lacking in that the delivery of the information typically does not take into account the physical capabilities or disabilities of users of such information.
For example, many users are hearing impaired or have difficulty understanding voice and/or visual communications due to physical impairments. Moreover, there may be a language issue whereby the language used to convey the information may not be a user's natural language thus making user understanding of the conveyed information an important issue in terms of the effectiveness of the communication. Further, increasingly our society is becoming more reliant on our communication infrastructure to convey important and crucial information to the public at large. Consequently, those in our society who cannot readily understand the conveyed information because of the manner of delivery are inherently at a disadvantage.
Even though our communication infrastructure, which includes communication devices and universally accessible communication networks, has significantly facilitated the dissemination of information, these disadvantaged members of our society are increasingly becoming marginalized with respect to their participation in our communication systems. In particular, members of the general public who have difficulty understanding voice communications often face formidable obstacles in readily understanding the mass broadcast of information received through readily available communication devices. There are many scenarios of such cases. For example hearing impaired individuals or those who have difficulty understanding broadcast information due to lack of facility with the particular language used in broadcasting information to the public include students at Universities attending lectures, members of a church attending church services, and members of professional organizations attending conventions and general meetings of such organizations.
Often many of these broadcasts are also available online over the Internet as live or recorded broadcasts. Such broadcasts are often viewed as a useful technological improvement in the dissemination of information to select groups of the public at large. However, inasmuch as these live or recorded broadcasts are useful to individuals who cannot attend the actual broadcast or cannot listen to the actual broadcasts, persons with hearing impairments or persons with difficulty understanding the language of these broadcasts cannot avail themselves of this technological improvement or other improvements in the mass dissemination of voice communications to select groups. The design of new devices or adjustments to the operation of already existing devices may be an approach to addressing these obstacles faced by many members of our society. However, such redesigns may be impractical and more importantly may not be prudent from a purely economic standpoint.